5 Key Performance Indicators to Measure Event Success

Planning an event doesn’t end with the event itself. Instead, it is after the event that you are able to assess its effectiveness, and reap the benefits. These metrics should be determined during the planning phase to facilitate convenient analysis post-event. The goals of every event may differ from one another, so consider what the event strives to achieve. Whether it is sales, publicity, or branding, set your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) such that you are able to measure them in figures. Here are 5 examples of general KPI that you can utilize in measuring the success of your event:

Social media engagement

Social media is a great platform for communicating to the public, giving your brand a personality, and raising publicity for the event. Hence, social media engagement is a good indicator of brand awareness and customer sentiments towards the brand. Creating a hash tag for your event is a great way to track mentions and comments. While it may be difficult to assess sentiments due to its qualitative nature, you may derive figures from the increase in followers, number of shares, mentions, likes, and views.

Actual day attendance

A high interest level in your event does not equate to outstanding ticket sales, and the number of actual day attendees will differ greatly, especially for free events. Attendance is a good gauge to evaluate the success of every event, as attendees are vital components.

With real-time analytics and data capture points in GEVME, you are able to monitor the actual turn out rate at your events – live. Compare the number of people you reached out to and the number of people who expressed interest to assess the effectiveness of your pre-event marketing. Differentiating the number of people who registered and the quantity of attendees that showed up during the event can also measure your success in drawing the crowd. In the long term, track the progress of your number of attendees for recurring events in order to establish realistic goals.

Measure your attendee’s satisfaction with a survey sent via a cloud solution after the event. Keep the questions short and specific for the convenience of your attendees, and make sure you are able to gather quantitative results from the questions. Yes or no questions or asking attendees to rate their satisfaction for different components of the event will allow you gather comparable figures.

Monetary returns

If the goal of your event is to generate monetary outcomes, sales numbers during your event and in the weeks following the event will be a good indication of your success in promoting your products or services. You can also measure your event success through monitoring your customers and the conversion of sales leads generated from the event. Did majority of the sales come from repeat customers or new consumers who made their purchase after attending your event?

Press and media coverage

The amount of media coverage can indicate the success of your event’s publicity / Source

Press and media coverage are valuable to every business, and positive reports, especially, helps build trust and knowledge about your brand and event. Whether is pre or post event, any coverage will help boost your brand recall in consumers’ minds, and increase sponsorship opportunities for future events. If one of your event goals is to raise brand awareness, the amount of press and media coverage can be a good indication of your event’s success. This includes any outlet from print and online to television and radio.

Reasons to Measure Event Success

There are a few great reasons why you should create a KPI list for market events to measure your event’s success, including the following:

Measuring your success after each event provides you with more accurate estimations for your future events and allows for better planning in order to improve your management approach. In order to facilitate your measurements, it is best to determine the goals of your event and establish your KPI accordingly. Subdividing each component of your event into measurable indicators will help you achieve more specific measurements for your analysis.

Metrics to measure before, during, and after an event

You can also measure event success before, during, and after an event.

Registration metrics

Use performance indicators for events, such as registration metrics. These techniques are used as a base for registration methods because they provide information that indicates whether the registration process is going in the right direction even before the event launch.

You can track registrations with metrics that reflect the number of event registrants with active registration in addition to providing reports for the end of the calendar year or any other period.

For example:

The number of registrations at the RISE event remained at the same level as the previous year, whereas registrations at the FinTech event saw an increase, etc.

If you are planning to build a strong event business, first of all, you should think about building a powerful brand with well-crafted marketing communications. Evaluation of event performance should include the following metrics of the brand impact:

brand reputation: measure how your event is viewed and perceived by the attendees, speakers, and the market.

Post-event NPS survey

Right after you finish your event, attendees will still be engaged and excited. Capitalise on this excitement with a post–event NPS survey for attendee feedback (Net Promoter Score (NPS)). NPS surveys often include a single follow-up question that is easy to answer. Event managers and facilitators may also use longer surveys to gather post–event info in greater detail.

For example: “What was the most _________at the event?”

Tips for measuring KPI for events

Use some of the following tips to better understand what are good KPI for events and maximise your marketing strategy:

Set SMART goals.

Do you want to know how to evaluate an event’s success? The SMART approach is the best one. This means that while creating your event marketing strategy, you should conform to the following criteria: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. This technique helps with alleviating common project challenges and pushes you to set specific goals so you can better measure success after the event is finished.

Apply event metrics.

Don’t forget to choose event metrics and apply them before, during, and after the event so you can measure the event’s success effectively.

Use event hashtags.

To intensify the media effect and attract more clients from other event-related niches, use hashtags appropriately. To increase the awareness and visibility of your events, use hashtags. By including a hashtag in your promotions, commentary, and post-event materials, you will make it easy for people to find photos and interact with your event, etc.

Use event marketing software.

This is a great idea for modern event planning. It helps with your target audience research, analysis, and marketing through the use of event pages, emails, and so much more.

Track your success.

Both failures and successes should be tracked. There’s no easy way to make your goals a reality, but you can achieve them by taking certain actions. Here’s how to track your goals for maximum success with GEVME’s event marketing metrics.

What are metrics for event success that you use in measuring your event success? Let us know in the comments below!

GEVME is the fully integrated platform that makes your event lifecycle happy. With advanced apps for each event management process, the platform helps you craft a custom event toolkit. Request a DEMO to experience the automation of website development, online registration, onsite check-in and related services.

It would be interesting to look at weekly usage trends, how those trends are changing and what those trends tell us about our customer base, but that assessment would probably be “information overload” in this post, so I’ll save that for another day.